You Should Flirt More

How to infuse your winter with a little movement

(I’ve returned to reading these aloud, due to a request; you can stream above. Please let me know if you take advantage of this feature! I’m not sure whether to continue with it.)

Would you like to buy this print? There are ten 5x7” prints available (THEY’VE GROWN!), and that’s it, forever. (These make a good gift.)

A Note for You, If You’re Having A Bad Day:

Dear Friend,

A few months ago, I wanted to start writing a new book, but I wasn’t sure how to begin. So I asked my colleague and mentor Jill if she would help me get it off the ground by being an accountability partner. Could I send her some writing every week so she could encourage me? She said yes. But still, the writing wasn’t coming.

Instead, I made an outline. Here was what the book would be. These would be the chapters. This was the plan. The plan would help me reach the finish line, and then the book would be done. Wasn’t that what I wanted? I sent the outline to Jill.

Jill responded that a lot of men having heterosexual sex with women see foreplay as something to be sped through, as a way to get to the end. She suggested that this book might benefit from a more feminine approach.

“Amble up to the book. Survey its terroir. Collect shells from the beach and tuck some acorns in your pocket,” she wrote. In other words: flirt unabashedly with all the things this book might be. 

In adulthood, it’s easy to forget what was once fun about flirting – even if you aren’t in a committed relationship (or three). You might remember it as being exhausting. All that work, just to get someone to ultimately watch “Survivor” with you, or tolerate your farts. The time it took to get dressed up or put on fancy eyeliner; the achy smiling and laughing, even when nothing was particularly funny; the terribly real possibility of rejection. Isn’t a lot of being a grownup about earning the right to not try so hard? To get to lie on your couch seven out of seven of the days of the week, assured that you have accomplished the big life things you once set out to accomplish?

But another way of thinking about flirting is to describe it as entertaining interesting possibilities. Last week I warned about the dangers of “maybe”; this week, I’m going to espouse its virtues. Consider the possibility that flirting might be fun; that flirtation might still have a place in your life. 

This is a manakin, among the most flirtatious birds.

In my twenties, when I was dating a lot, I really liked to go out and flirt with people. I enjoyed going to a bar, seeing a cute person, and doing prolonged eye contact with them. Maybe they’d come up to me and say, “I'm sorry, do I know you?” And I’d say, “Nope, I just thought you were intriguing and I wanted to know you better!” Sometimes this went poorly; other times it went well; occasionally, it was world-changing. These days, my dance card is considerably fuller. I’ve mostly found my people, and I want to spend my limited time loving them. Maybe you relate to this, and don’t see yourself as having time for extra emotional sexiness in your life. But I’ll bet there’s space for a little novelty and newness, even amidst your repletion. One thing about novelty is that it can actually be space-making. Having new experiences can help you realize what old ones you can metaphysically give to Goodwill, or at least put in the basement to see if you’ll miss them. 

The other thing I love about flirtation (and also about being wildly in love) is that they are emotional states in motion. In winter, when a lot of default emotional states are slow and bogged-down and even staying-still, there are moments where I want to shout, “WE ARE WORTHY OF DELIGHT!” And you are in that worthy “we,” so here are some new flirtations to try:

Flirt with your possible selves.

You don’t have to follow the path you planned. I’ve only recently become aware of the “sunk cost fallacy,” which is the phenomenon of being reluctant to change course because of all you have already invested, even when changing course is clearly the better decision. It’s usually OK to quit something that’s not feeling good – or at least entertain the idea of what it would be like to quit. If you’re stuck, allow yourself to wonder about what would happen if you made small or major changes to the life you’ve so far chosen. 

For flirting with possible selves, I like the question, “What if that were true?” What if it were true that you loved your body the way it is right now? What if it were true that you were earnestly applying to Master’s programs? What if it were true that you were a vegan? What if it were true that your next PTA meeting was the last one you were ever going to? Sometimes the answers to these questions might be, “Then I would run out of resources immediately and probably die.” And then you have some new information. Flirting with possible selves doesn’t mean you marry them! Some of your possible selves might have really bad breath and be unresponsive lovers! You can let those ones go.

Flirt with creative projects.

I loved flirting with my book. I showed up to the book every Thursday and wrote whatever I was thinking about regarding the book’s overall theme. I gave myself two hours to write without stopping. I wrote beautiful things I didn’t know I knew, and I wrote hot garbage. I wrote questions and came up with people I could interview to learn the answers. I had fun with the book. I got to know it. And now, it’s gathering shape; it’s actively becoming.

Try on new writing styles, or musical ideas, or art media. Give yourself a set amount of time to have unplanned fun in a creative practice you enjoy. I clearly remember the day I decided to try watercolor. Two things were immediately clear: 1) It was so beautiful and so soothing to put the bright pigment on the toothy white paper; and 2) WOW was I ever bad at making anything look the way I wanted it to look. Like, I was PROFOUNDLY bad at it. But the first piece of information was more important than the second one, because the first one was immutable. The second one I knew could change. 

Flirt with a new vegetable.

There is a vegetable or fruit out there you haven’t tried, I am pretty sure. If you don’t know where to find one, try an international foods market. Or maybe there’s a vegetable you’ve tried but never cooked with. In any case, it’s fun to think about the possibilities of say, breadfruit, or jicama. Buy the vegetable, look up a recipe online, and find out if you like it! You don’t have to like it! Flirting is all about finding out. 

Flirt with an old piece of writing.

Find something you wrote ten years ago, or something you remember reading and loving. (That was 2013, if that helps.) Revisit it. You don’t have to do this linearly; you can approach the piece of writing with curiosity. What about this was important to you then? What does it have to teach you now?

Flirt with the map.

Go on a walk along a path or through an alley that you’ve never pursued before. There are probably some in your very neighborhood; and certainly there are some adjacent to the grocery store you go to, or the building where you work. If you’re not sure where to start, look at an actual map. Find a road on the map (a small one, if you can manage it) and, if you can’t picture what’s along that road, go walk down it. Choose to notice the things you see. Is there something that a new version of you might fall in love with on this road?

Be wildly in love.

OK, so this isn’t flirting. This is powerful Relationship Energy; the kind that makes you excited to get out of bed in the morning. I imagine you’re familiar with the practice of keeping a gratitude list (or even a gratitude journal). Here’s one of mine from 2012 when I desperately wanted to be perceived as A Certain Type Of Girl:

Sure, it’s good to be grateful for your chickens, or the loaf of bread on your counter, or your partner’s soft hands. But what if, for even just one of those things, you shifted your passive, quiet gratitude, into wild, unwieldy, passionate love? What if instead of saying, “I’m grateful for my cat’s purr,” you said, “I AM IN LOVE WITH MY CAT’S PURR!” When your cat starts purring, you let your heart skip a beat. “Oh my God, I am SO SMITTEN WITH THIS!” you can say! Let your heart go off the rails. Let your gratitude be so enormous that it fills you up and empties you out; that you have to smile a big smile or maybe shout a little bit, like A Different Type Of Girl at an NSYNC concert in 2001. Let your gratitude dance and wail. It’s fun! And we are worthy of delight. 

Love,

Sophie

A note:

A few weeks ago, I asked the paid subscription tier of this newsletter what they did when they were confronted with uncomfortable emotions (like loneliness or anger), and the outpouring of comments is so thoughtful and so spot-on that I think it is the most valuable thing this newsletter has ever produced. To have access to that cache of comments (and to this community), subscribe to a paid tier! And if you want access to it, but your finances make joining a paid tier impossible for you, let me know and I’ll hook you up.